On 12/22/05, Shane Hathaway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [Shane] > >>Are you sure ZCML is The Right Way? I know its purpose (since I helped > >>invent Zope 3): to combine configurations by multiple developers without > >>imposing a particular workflow. However, I maintain that Python code could > >>do the job better. The Python code I have in mind is not the same as > >>Jeffrey's examples. I'll elaborate if there's interest. > > [Pete Taylor] > > *ping* for interest in elaboration on the code you have in mind... > > Ok. Here are two snippets that express the same thing. First in ZCML: > > <browser:skin > name="Rotterdam" > interface="zope.app.rotterdam.Rotterdam" /> > > <browser:resource > name="zope3.css" > file="zope3.css" > layer="zope.app.rotterdam.rotterdam" /> > > Now in Python (hypothetical): > > from zope.app import rotterdam > > def configure(context): > context.browser.skin( > name='Rotterdam', > interface=rotterdam.Rotterdam) > context.browser.resource( > name='zope3.css', > file='zope3.css', > layer=rotterdam.rotterdam) > > All functionality and capabilities of ZCML are retained, but there are > important, subtle differences. > > - I could conceivably type configuration directives at the interactive > Python prompt. I could use the standard dir() and help() functions to > find out what directives exist and how to use them.
This reminds me a lot of the initialize(context) in Zope 2 products. I still have very mixed feelings about that system, most of it due to lack of knowledge or understanding on my part of how to write a good 'initialize()' function, and what should take place in there (configuration) versus elsewhere in that __init__.py module. One thing that I like about ZCML is control over order, especially in regards to configuration. What order things are initialized in, regardless of alphabetical order. So if I have a lot of packages that depend on 'hurry.file' being configured, I can ensure that it happens before my files. This was a problem that I had with Formulator in Zope 2. If I had my own widgets defined in my own product, the behavior of registration was a little bit different depending on whether my Product's name came before or after Formulator alphabetically. I also _really_ like how well documented ZCML is - especially in comparison to the rest of Zope 3. APIDOC captures a lot of things, but the ZCML menu is by far the most useful and usable. There are still too many unknown interfaces and APIs inside of Zope. It's no fault of APIDOC. There are a lot of interfaces out there, and sorting and presenting them in a cogent way is difficult. ZCML, on the other hand, is a limited vocabulary, and in a tool like APIDOC I've found it to be more discoverable. That is EXTREMELY important to me. dir() and help() at the Python prompt are nice. But so is schema-driven apidoc reference material - especially if that schema remains used as / close to what's used to transform incoming data. People don't always spell out parameters in doc strings clearly. Interface schema fields, on the other hand, give a great view about what's required, what's not, and what format it should be in. Other problems that I've had with Python based configuration in the past has involved not knowing when to do the configuration. Do I want to register the class I just defined in the module code? class Foo(...): pass registerAsFooable(Foo) Well, that tends to lead to problems, since it takes away from being able to use Foo without also having to carry its registration which may not be wanted or required by a client of Foo. These are the sorts of things that one has to define and restrict early on, because once a bad example gets out there in the wild and other people start copying it. Webware had 'configure.py' files and I *HATED* seeing them. They looked sloppy and weird, stuffing things into dictionaries whose structures I didn't know or understand. But if that were a route one decided to use, one would have to lay down VERY strict rules. Otherwise we lose all the benefits of the Component Architecture and start heading back into a free-for-all mess. Such rules might be: no other package or module code should import a configuration module. Only the configuration machinery should ever do it. With Zope 2, I never was able to write and keep a good personal rule about how to deal with a Product's __init__.py module, and it would be involved with doing things besides configuration. Modules and objects that were imported in the top of the __init__.py module probably should have been imported inside initialize(context). Only and only and only and only 'configuration' logic should be in a configuration module. The module HAS to provide and only provide an IComponentArchitectureConfiguration interface, and should export only the names in that interface. Alarms and warnings should go off otherwise. I just believe - heavily - after many of my Zope 2 experiences that configuration as done by ZCML should be as separate from the code itself as possible. If it's going to be in the same programming language, it needs to be made clear what it is, what can be done, and what can NOT be done. I'm all for ZCML doing less. There's too much magic, in my opinion, that goes on in the browser package. I remember trying to figure out why I couldn't easily supply a replacement template for my editforms (I had a template in a common package that I wanted many other components to use - yet despite a long-ago wish for a way to refer to such templates and relative to their package paths, I don't think it's ever gone in). Even if I supplied a special 'class' in the editform directive and had that class override the template attribute used in the base editform class, the ZCML directive handling code still overrode it. It took me a long time to even understand what the directive code was doing and how it was doing it. But I still like the configuration being very separate from the 'component code'. I know, without a doubt, that just importing a Python package or module is not going to suddenly register or re-register components. ZCML based configuration keeps things separate, and it keeps the likelihood of unwanted side effects down to zero or near zero. > - If I want to register a lot of similar things, in ZCML I have to > either repeat myself, leading to poor maintainability, or create new > directives, leading to directive proliferation. In Python I can use > variables, loops, functions, etc., reusing skills I already know. Programmatic configuration isn't always the most readable thing either. I understand very little about Makefiles anymore. It's been a long time since I've used them heavily. Yet I still find many of them easier to understand than many setup.py distutils files (most setup.py files are fine. But some start pulling off too many crazy tricks and even though I'm extremely comfortable with Python, I walk away from those in fear). > - If I want to debug a registration, I can use pdb or any other Python > debugging tool. > > - Code snippets can include both the code and the default configuration > (yet users are not forced to use the configuration), making code samples > clearer. And that's where the danger of proliferation - by intent or accident - of unwanted configuration happening can occur. I've lived through that problem too many times in the past when trying to write lightweight sortof-component-architecture-like systems for Zope 2. I admit that I was also having to invent everything on the fly and under a deadline, so the whole 'register a thing right after declaring it' option often seemed easiest at the moment... Until I added a new module to the system and it got loaded automatically before the others and I couldn't figure out why certain registrations were disappearing and so on. Side effects. I don't want them. > Those are the technical arguments. There is also the marketing argument > that a lot of the target audience has been burned by XML, but I don't > think that's the right basis for making a decision. I sincerely believe > Python code would be better than XML for the technical reasons I listed > above. I think that is a valid marketing argument. And I say, again, that I'm not the biggest ZCML fan. But I've been burned _way_ too many times by Python based configuration. For a small system (ie, one not running the full zope.app package), ZCML is overkill. But for even moderately sized systems, it's been a blessing having them separate. How our components get registered and configured is reliable and predictable. I think you could achieve this with Python, but you'd need do document the hell out of it and put in a smart and restrictive system that would ensure that sloppy configuration didn't happen, that the 'configure.py' module was unused by anything but the configuration system, and that the package it was in could be loaded as a Python package/module without the 'configure.py' module (which would have the most requirements on the configuration of the outside system) be ignored or otherwise not "blow up" when trying to register against something not defined. At that point, you're putting a lot of restrictions on Python that may also be uncomfortable to people. But I think (just based on personal experience) that that's the only way to make it work. Also, I'd like to point out that Python is not the best language for housing a lot of complex configuration data. Perl and Ruby tend to be a lot easier to use here, as the language kindof makes it easier to write fake little mini-languages since they're a lot more free-form syntactically. I'm sure there are others here that remember maintaining nested tuples of tuples of tuples for Zope things like __ac_permissions__. Those were not always easy to read or maintain. ZCML has the benefits of using zope.schema to define and format the fields used in configuration and turn them into meaningful objects. The ability to use local dotted names: <foo for=".interfaces.IPony"> <far class="..zoo.Butterstick">. The ability to see those things _clearly_ defined in APIDOC because of their schema-ness. If I need to know whether I can pass only one interface reference in to a particular ZCML attribute or if I can pass in multiple, I can actually get that information and it's based on the schema, but still pass it in as just a string in XML. How would that work in Python? Would it be the responsibility of the 'configure.py' maintainer to use tools to expand things? Would the configuration machinery used try to be smart about what's passed in to allow for both: from interfaces import IThis, IThat configure.registerView(for=IThis, adapts=(IThat, '..interfaces.IOther')). Would that be allowed? Configuration's not easy when wanting to allow a big system to all be used together via the sort of loose coupling that Zope 3 allows. Staying within the native programming language has benefits, but also may be a dangerous path to shortcuts that then cut down on the sort of re-use and extendible / replaceable connection points that I've been able to benefit from over the past few months of Zope 3.x based development. I'm not saying this is impossible to do in Python. These are just the risks and issues that I've been thinking of, and have thought of for the past couple of years. We've developed a custom framework for dealing with data flow and transformation for a couple of 'enterprise' level customers, and XML is used heavily to wire all of these transforms together. The XML files can get HUGE and not always easy to maintain. But the job that they perform is so wildly different than what the Python application and component code is doing that, well, it made sense to separate them. (Plus we had the special requirement to be able to reload that configuration file and all that it specifies. Clearing out a big registry and then filling it up again based on those configuration settings is a lot easier than refreshing a big system of Python code). Let people have their Rails. Let them grow their applications. Let them see what happens when it gets big and the whole "programming by convention" thing starts to break down because conventions get forgotten or you put a text file in one of their magic directories that causes the whole system to blow up because it shares the name with some forgotten convention that Rails (or its clones) looks for. We've been through that. I think that the ZCML "situation" could be improved with: * simpler use - let Python code say what it adapts and implements. Let Python code subclass from BrowserView. Use ZCML to just register and name the object. Promote this in documentation, advocacy articles, and so on. * alternate syntax? Not Python, but maybe something python-"ish" but geared towards entering the kind of data references that one has to type a lot in configuration. * cut down on the magics like dynamic class creation. this was a frustrating surprise when I first encountered it a couple of months ago. * for many of the core ZCML configuration directives, explain their Python alternative. Not to promote its use when writing large systems, shared toolkits or frameworks, but to show how to test or just to use adapters and utilities in small applications that don't require the full Zope toolkit. I mentioned that I liked the ZCML documentation. It's great for finding out what directives are available and what their options are. But it's still pretty poor at explaining what is really going on behind the scenes. That may be more advanced documentation for some cases - but it could cut down on some users frustration and surprises. OK. This has been long and rambling. I blame the christmas lunch cocktails. :) -- Jeff Shell _______________________________________________ Zope3-users mailing list Zope3-users@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-users